Over 1400 families who had started living on the rubber plantation of Harrisons & Crossfields -- the Chengara struggle -- will now get land in a deal brokered by the Chief Minister in the presence of the Leader of the Opposition. P N Venugopal.

Cholanaickans are the only remaining tribe in Asia living in rock-cave shelters and they are the only surviving hunter-gatherer indigenous community in the country. The community is undergoing a conflict between its basic instincts and the beckoning calls of the outside world.
M Suchitra reports

In yet another
confrontation with industry, hundreds of landless families â
principally dalits and adivasis -- have occupied the Harrison
Malayalam rubber plantation in Kerala. Claiming that the companyâs
land lease has long expired, they are demanding 5 acres of land and
Rs 50,000 for each family. Reports P N Venugopal.

In Attapady block of Kerala's Palakkad district, illicit liquor is taking a heavy toll
among the adviasis. Addiction to the brew has led to many deaths and suicides, even as a
complacent and complicit administration looks on.
M Suchitra. reports.

Are they members of a Church without caste hierarchy, or are they still
Dalits, with all that it implies in Hinduism? Dalit Christians find that despite
being a numerical majority in the faith in India, the promise of equality
is as distant as before. They're taking their protests to Parliament this winter.
Padmalatha Ravi reports

History has shown us that the remedy for red terror isn't white terror, or any other kind of terror. From Telengana onwards, whenever extreme Left ideology was suppressed violently, it has resurrected itself. But the Centre and the state governments have paid no attention to either the lessons of history or even their own reports. The Prime Minister repeatedly states that the Maoists are the gravest threat to the nation's internal security. The Home Minister proclaims that operations would be intensified to crush the Maoists. Whether the real purpose of the war is ensuring national security or furthering corporate interests, the ones who die are invariably the poor. When the government talks of intensifying the offensive, it means only that more security forces, more Maoists, more common people will get killed. M Suchitra

Dr Yehuda Kovesh
from Melbourne, Australia is a Consultant Endocrinologist to the UmonHon among other
tribes as well as Visiting Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Havana,
Cuba. While on an Indian tour early this month, he visited the Athirappilly waterfall,
70 kms from Kochi. It is his experience with the Adivasis of the near by Vazhachal forest area.

Despite crores of rupees having been
spent in name of tribal and other development programmes in one block
of Palakkad district in Kerala, the region suffers from poor access to
decent health care. 80 per cent of the adivasi population here are
living in abject poverty. M Suchitra
reports.